53 Replies to “We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans”

  2. C’mon, Kate, this is hardly fair.
    The GTA has a population of about 5.5 million, or more than 5 times Saskatchewan’s, shoehorned into 7,000 sq km, which is what – a dozen good sized farms in SK? Of course we’re going to have more smog, pollution, and thugs.
    But we didn’t give the nation Tommy Douglas.
    So let’s call it even, ‘k?

  3. That Torontoist photo is nice, but it isn’t smog. No leaves on the trees? That makes it winter, and we don’t get smog in the winter.
    I like the oil sands: when the price of oil goes up, so does the dollar and the TSX.

  4. I agree with Mississauga Matt — I don’t think that’s smog. We had some temperature swings here a couple of weeks ago, and there was quite a bit of fog around the city on a few mornings. This is most likely that.
    Damn hippies.

  6. The Torontist picture is a fraud. That’s fog, not smog, which Toronto gets lots of, especially spring and late fall. The date on the picture is Sept 13, 2007, which is a disconnect with the scene – Toronto’s trees still have leaves in Sept, won’t even reach peak colour before thanksgiving. This picture was more likely taken in mid to late November, some year. Adiabatic fog is very common in Toronto in November.

  7. I do like Saskabush’s clear blue skies, however… Oh, to stargaze in Saskatchewan 🙂

  8. That may be fog in the picture, but a denser atmosphere is going to retain more pollution particles, especially if there is no wind to provide a constant movement of air mass. I know where we live that when it is foggy the smoke from woodstoves and fireplaces crawls out the chimney and stays very low to the ground. On clear days the smoke goes straight up. Don’t know why pollution in tranna would be any different.

  9. I enjoyed my years in Sask, but those clear blue winter skies do not make me miss it. I’ll take Tarana, smog and all. (But I still think it’s fog.)

  11. How come no-one mentions our carbon sinks in Alberta? Miles and miles of trees just sucking up that carbon and giving back oxygen. In Saskatchewan the miles and miles of wheat fields. How about Toronto, how many trees you got there or veggie gardens?
    The per capita measure is as fake as global warming. It makes China look good and Canada look bad, that’s why eco-nuts use it as the preferred measure. More hype.

  12. MM
    Good point. Checked the flikr link and it’s a January shot. Then again it isn’t clear if the photog gets the difference twixt smog, fog, inversions, perversions, art or cheese.
    Syncro

  13. Kevin B. Yes Sask. gave Canada Commie Douglas, but he is dead(not dead enough) but dead. You still have smog and thugs which includes your illustrious
    Mayor. Sorry about your luck buddy.

  15. I would happily put the CO2 back in the gas before I ship it to Ontario. Dam n TransCanada , they want it less than 2% so it wont chunk up their turboexpanders while they are dropping the heat content for Ontario.
    Id stick the H2S back in too, then the utilities can save on mercaptan.
    what a stupid measure of CO2 emmissions when your exporting 90% of your product out of province. emmissions in your sted.

  17. I sure wouldn’t be basing anything important on information shoveled out for the masses by the BC Ministry of the Environment. Their primary mission in life is to hand Premier Campbell ideas for justifying higher taxes so they can agitate for higher salaries for themselves and their friends.
    The rest of us are just skeptics.

  18. I find it amazing that readers from GTA are all saying that smog doesn’t exist in winter. Priceless!
    If you want to see prairie smog in winter just go to Calgary when they have a temperature inversion. I’ve also seen it Yellowknife after a week of -40. No wind and auto exhaust just hangs in the air.

  19. All this is irrelevant…..each day we get more and more evidence that CO2 and humans have little to no effect on the climate.
    It is impossible to prove a negative but the alarmist “scientists (bureaucrats) seem to have mastered that…..with their phony science/studies.
    You all must remember the photo-shopped smoke stacks of the GTA. You remember the long idle power plant stacks photo-shopped to show polution.
    Then there was the Oil Sands aerial pic of steam on a cold day.
    It seems OBOZO can’t rely on the IPCC either….he’s bent on setting up NOAA as IPCC2.
    http://newsmax.com/InsideCover/obama-global-warming-agency/2010/02/08/id/349286?s=al&promo_code=96E7-1

  20. Hog town is the center of the Universe.
    Too bad it’s the Bizzaro Universe instead of reality.
    In reality, Hog Town is to the Left of Never Never Land.
    If you want to see prairie smog in winter just go to Calgary when they have a temperature inversion.
    ~Texas Canuck
    It must be a long while since you’ve been to Calgary, Texas Canuck, because the smog you are talking about hasn’t been seen by me for a few years, I’m not sure how many, and it’s noticable absence has been a point of discussion between me and my wife for about 4 years now.

  21. Hunter:
    Actually, if you’d ever visitedToronto, and gone up on the CN Tower, or even the Roof Lounge at the Hyatt, you’d notice that outside of the very downtown core, and a few corridors like Yonge and Bloor, all you see are trees. I lived in a couple of downtown neighbourhoods, one mostly Greek, the other mostly Italian/Portugese. Every one of those families had a garden in the backyard, growing tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, eggplant, etc. And even if you took all 7,000 sqkm of the GTA as hopelessly barren, which it isn’t, Ontario still has about 50% more land than Alberta.
    Now, what was your point?

  22. Oz
    I’ve been in Calgary for the last 19 years and have experienced various inversions where the smog is distinct from 84th SE/NE.
    Watch when the next slow developing chinook rolls in.
    Syncro

  23. @ Vitruvius
    Its not square meters that require heating, cooling, transportation, refrigeration, lights, etc., it’s people. Energy use per person is a more relevant measure.

  24. You people out west are too hard on Hogtown. I was there for the Royal Winter Fair and while waiting for the GO train watched their fancy sign scrolling out the total for the energy output of the wind turbine on the CNE grounds. I am certain it said the turbine put out enough power to run the sign and then a few houses. See, Toronto is on the cutting edge of the green revolution. 1 functioning turbine, which turns now and again, 100000 more to go!!!

  25. hunter – Toronto is heavily treed. Take a google view and you’ll realize that. In fact, it’s even against the law to cut down trees.
    As for vegetable gardens, they are a mainstay in many areas of the city as pointed out. Also many areas have grapes – and at a certain time of the year, the communities get busy making wine.
    Smog is in the summer. But grey skies and dull weather are common in Nov-Feb.
    However, farm country is clean and pure – and no large city can match those qualities. Beautiful photos of Sask country.

  26. It is cubic meters that absorb atmospheric concentrations of stuff, Ulm, which (assuming constant atmospheric depth) are reasonably proxied by land surface area. Therefore, if one is comparing responsibility for atmospheric concentrations of stuff, Canada should have its stuff output divided by Canada’s land area, just as, say, Singapore should have its stuff output divided by its land area.

  29. Correct, Syncro. Consider the following example. Let’s say 10 of “them” own a 1 km³ lake, and each of them puts 1 m³ of something in it. Their lake’s concentration of that stuff is now one in 100,000,000. Say, instead, that two of “us” own a 10 km³ lake, and each of us puts 10 m³ of something in it. Our lake’s concentration is now one in 500,000,000. So we each put ten times as much stuff out as each of them did, but their lake now has five times higher concentration of stuff than our lake does. If said stuff is bad for people, then they have a much bigger problem than we do.

  30. Here is a picture of Calgary’s downtown skyline.
    Classic Chinook Arch, no smog.
    http://tinyurl.com/yc9w6qj
    Used to be that the smog layer hovered just above the building tops and was 50-100+ feet thick.
    Not any more.
    The photo is from the East looking West, Syncro’s view.
    Watch when the next slow developing chinook rolls in.
    I lived in Calgary since 1972.
    Now I live just outside but drive in regularly and can see the whole city core as I make the drive in from the North on Road 13.

  33. Oz, you are right about not living in Calgary lately. I moved to Texas in ’01 so I haven’t seen the skyline in a while, but I used to see it daily from 14th Street NW and Nose Hill.

  34. I bet Saskatchewan has more ‘Smiths’ per capita than Ontario as well (and far less Mohammeds, Singhs and Aquinas, etc.) than Toronto and the GTA in general. I’m only 50 (only….) and I don’t have enough living relatives to determine where my European roots are so I guess I would not be out of place in most rural areas. I can assure you that my political stance is always welcome outside the GTA where I was born.
    So, for everyone who had the good fortune to be born or raised or find suitable (or transportable) employment in other areas of Canada, please remember that not everyone here is a Liberal. Those of us who have the deepest roots still tend to vote in a sane manner.

  35. I’m just do G D happy. I live in B.C. and I’m just so thrilled that all the f**king extra carbon tax I pay on fuel is showing some results. Especially in view of the fact that global warming is the biggest scam EVA!!!
    Horny toad

  36. Forgot to mention (Jack Daniels is kicking in – see, I am one of the rest) that the photos Kate posted showed a stunningly beautiful sky out there. I was in Regina between Christmas and New Years and saw that kind of sky on my way to the airport on Dec 31st. Very, very nice.

  37. No it isn’t, Syncro. Try it yourself, with some real
    numbers for some real problem you’re interested
    in. The math and the physics work as described.

  38. Were it possible to calculate, I think the best measure of ones pollution footprint would be on a pollution per dollar of GDP. That pollution would have to include air land and water. I bet the very poorest nations would be at the bottom of the chart and the developed nations at the top. I suspect such a chart would corrolate very close to the human misery index.

  39. To say that Calgary doesn’t have smog, especially on days with temperature inversions, is misleading to say the least. This is not my pic but if I look I am sure I can find one or two that are similar. But I can also find pics that I have taken where you can see the rockies as clear anything, and the mountains are at least sixty kilometers away from where I live.
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/ferreth/4243437938/

  40. Looking at those figures is like looking at vials of feces and sorting them by color.
    That’s not smog in Toronto, that’s smug.

  41. Vit
    You are an engineer, I’m not. My observations and snotty comments are generated by experience and booze.
    I don’t grok the theoretical math and physics but I do understand the practical application.
    Syncro
    Syncro

  42. This fits nicely with the prior thread. If all of the homes in the area were heated by wind power, just think of all of the available arable land come the final thaw of spring….

  43. You prairie folk have raised the temperature of the earth about 0.00001 degree, and so I would say, only 39.999999 to go and you’ll be able to go outside.

  44. I’ve seen brown fog hanging over Calgary during winter… but I don’t ever recall hearing of an “alert” for those with breathing problems to escape to the nearby hills…
    I suppose one advantage sometimes overlooked here is that the prevailing winds blow in the same direction, perhaps it blows all the way to Toronto? heh, sorry.
    in the link above regarding Toronto, it does seem to be another case where simply banning all autos in the Toronto area would be the only real and long term solution, and of course I support this idea. Good idea with all those coal burning electrical generation plants too. That’s still “a go” isn’t it?
    Do it Mr. McGuinty

  46. While living in Toronto in the 60s I used to think
    that the one good consequence of thermonuclear war
    was that the Russkies just might think it worthwhile
    to nuke Toronto. I know, if it had happened I would
    have been nuked too, but sometimes one has to
    sacrifice for the greater good.

  47. In the 90’s used to work on 29th floor of former NOVA bldg, downtown Calgary. You could see the smog, though never downtown, for some reason all of it was somehow pushed to the east edge of town sometimes it looked like fata morgana.

  48. No smog in Saskatchewan!! Obviously, you never owned an 1105 Massey-Ferguson tractor or an 850 MF combine with a 354 Perkins motor!

  49. Kate it is not about who has the smog; it is about who PAYS for cleaning up the smog! Mcsqinty has dirty coal; Mcsquintie country produces tons of smog. They claim to have no money….

  50. Joe Citizen
    […..No smog in Saskatchewan!! Obviously, you never owned an 1105 Massey-Ferguson tractor or an 850 MF combine with a 354 Perkins motor!]
    Yeah, I recall plowing river flats at night with an 806 IH…..had go elsewhere at about 03:00. It filled with smoke from the top down. It was weird watching the smog slowly lower.

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